Monday, October 22, 2012

Close Elections & The Fashion Business

- Fashion: remember our definition?
- Uniformity and revolt together.
-
Too many people wearing the same uniform, and the new style doesn't
seem very revolutionary anymore. Too revolutionary, not enough people
adopt the new fashion and it doesn't become a uniform.
- Why should revolutionaries want to wear a uniform?
Because
they are revolutionary only in the choice of role. They must have one
role or another. They don't want to stand out alone.
- Ok.
- Fashion is a tool of monopoly economics.
- Why?
-
Because of the power of advertising. Advertising is the deliberate
creation of fashion. The more advertising, the more the sense of uniform
community created around the product being sold, and the more the
product can be sold as a revolutionary improvement. Do you follow?
- Yes.
-
The techniques of selling fashion can be applied to selling political
candidates to voters. Some basic uniform is produced, a simple story of
how life should be lived. For Republicans, it is small government and
individuality, for Democrats, a fair and caring society. These ideas are
sold as revolutionary, constantly threatened by the encroachments of
the opposite party. Have you ever wondered why the Presidential
elections are often so close?
- I've assumed it was because both sides are using the same techniques of persuasion and are equally good at it.
- That's what I first thought.
- Not anymore?
-
I think that like in advertising fashions, political persuasion comes
up against a natural limit: a too successful campaign, throwing a
uniform on too many people, stops delivering the thrill of being in
revolt.
- So the less successful campaign recovers and gains a more equal position.
- Yes.
- I never thought of it that way before. But if you are right why do monopolies arise?
-
The goal of business is not making or selling products, but profit.
Competition is eliminated by mergers, buyouts, underpricing, government
subsidies, exclusive agreements with suppliers and distributors.
Customers of monopolies don't get to vote.